(1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to apparatus for feeding honey frames into a Cook & Beals Automatic Rotary Cutter Uncapping Machine (hereinafter called a `C & B`).
In all modern hives, honey frames are rectangular wooden frames formed with the outer ends of the upper edge extended outwards to form a lug at each upper corner of the frame. A sheet of wax fills in the frame, to serve as a base for the bees' construction of a honeycomb. When completed, the honeycomb covers both sides of the original starter sheet of wax, and the outer surfaces of the honeycomb bulge outwards from the plane of the frame. These outer surfaces are sealed with a capping of beeswax by the bees. Before honey can be extracted from the honeycomb, this capping has to be removed. On a small scale, this can be done by hand, but on the scale of commercial honey production, this job must be done mechanically. A number of machines are known for this purpose, but the C & B is one of the most widely used throughout Canada and the USA, and has been an industry standard in USA for about 35 years.
The C & B uses rotary cutters to cut the cappings from each side of the frame. However, the design of the C & B is such that frames must be fed vertically into the machine, one at a time, by pressing each frame downwards through a pair of flexible flaps which prevent honey from splashing upwards out of the machine.
(2) Description of the Prior Art
At present, no satisfactory automatic feed exists for a C & B:--each individual frame must be fed into the C & B manually. This is time-and-labour-intensive, and it is an object of the present invention to provide apparatus capable of automatically feeding honey frames one by one into a C & B.